


Verisimilitude

by dawl_and_dapple



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dreamscapes, Gen, Implied Relationships, Metafiction, Mild Gore, Minor Fjord/Jester Lavorre, Near Death Experiences, Reality Bending, Things get weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27548332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawl_and_dapple/pseuds/dawl_and_dapple
Summary: “But don’t let it weigh on you, dear. Heavy thoughts aren’t healthy. After all, you’ve got a lot of people looking out for you, people who love you dearly, who wouldn’t stand to see you hurt. I should know. I’m one of them.”A place deep in Jester’s heart ached like a big sharp splinter had become lodged between her lungs. A sob burst from her throat.“Jester?”“Oh, I’m so sorry, Molly,” she gasped, holding her burning cheeks. “You did nothing wrong. But I don’t know why I am crying. Isn’t that funny.”-Try as she might, Jester can't put her finger on why it is that she's on edge. While everything appears to be normal and all her friends assure her that she is safe and sound, she begins to notice discrepancies. The edges of her reality begin to fray and she worries that she may not unravel the problem at hand without help.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre & The Mighty Nein
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've written in a hot minute and my first CR fic ever so pls read this with a generous handful of salt. I'm a bit rusty.

One grey morning the first snow in a decade fell over the rooftops of Nicodranas. It fell gently and quietly, like a careful hand had shaken sugar dust over the entire city in the night without waking a single person. Jester watched as a gull hopped over the small shelf of roof below her window. It left little triangular holes in the snow with its funny stalk-like legs. It did not see Jester, who peered just over the lip of the windowsill, through the misty glass, at the bird, quiet as can be. The bird stuck its beak an inch into the snow and blinked its black eyes.

Jester shoved her window open and laughed as the gull cried out and hurried to escape the chateau’s roof. Snow was flung up into her face and onto her bedroom floor about her bare feet. She watched the gull drop down between the buildings and vanish, still croaking in alarm.

Carefully, Jester cupped her hands and dipped them into the snow. She scooped a crumbly semi-sphere of snow away from the roof and brought it close to her nose to inspect the imprint of the gull’s beak. After a second of thought she pressed her face into her hands, her nose into the little divot, and giggled. She’d never seen snow before. She’d never felt it, or watched it melt. It had a funny texture, crunchy and fluffy at the same time, like a strange pastry crust. She placed a little in her mouth and let it turn to water slowly.

Jester frowned and placed a hand over her the collar of her dress. Some snow had fallen onto her upper chest while she’d put her face into it, about an inch below her throat. The melting snow was soaking through the fine dyed cotton and chilling her.

The snow had come overnight, that year, with a ferocity that it never had in living memory. The Menagerie Coast was cursed by its heat in that regard. But that winter it had fallen under the moon.

So, Jester hadn’t seen the snow falling. She imagined it must have been like powdered sugar, falling in fine lace sheets over the rooftops and streets and squares in the dark. She imagined drawing her fingertips through the snow on doorsteps, like the sugar sprinkled over her dessert plate, leaving shapes of little words and little animals for the people of Nicodranas to wake up to as they left their homes.

She thought this as she leant on the windowsill. Quickly, she was seized by an energy and rushed about her room, reaching for her tools.

First, a house dusted with snow. Jester worked hard to make the white pigment as pure and uniform as the stuff she saw through her window. Next, the gull with its entire head buried in the snowdrift. She had seen illustrations of snow in books from her library collection and knew that up-close it was made from tiny little nets of frozen water. They looked like doilies. Jester copied a snow doily from one of her favourite illustrations above the gull.

After some time, she sat back on her heels and looked over her work. A portion of her wall that she’d kept clean, the very last stretch that sat flush with the bottom of the wall, was now finally covered. It was good; she was getting tall enough to reach above her older drawings anyway.

And when her paintings filled her room from floor to ceiling Jester would be old enough to leave the Chateau. The doors will open, and her mama would kiss her, and Off She Will Go! Jester would finally see the rest of the world.

But for the moment, Jester sat cross-legged with her chin on her fist, staring at her drawings.

A chunky cherry-red and charcoal-black rendering of her mother was smiling at her from the plaster. Jester had drawn a little blue triangle next to her left side – an attempt at a sapphire, although Jester was still unhappy with the result.

“Mama,” she said, leaning close to the wall. “There is snow outside! It looks just like sugar dust on a donut, but it doesn’t taste sweet at all. I checked. Look! The roofs look like they are under blankets.”

After pausing for only a moment, she kicked her painting supplies out of the way and shut the window. Then, humming to herself and smiling, she got to her knees in a corner of her room behind her bed.

In that corner there was a door. The door was small and square, just her size, and carved from a deep red wood that had been covered all over in drawn flowers and vines and bumblebees. Jester opened it and crawled into the dim passageway it concealed. The air was cool here and a little dirty. She wrinkled her nose and widened her pupils to see as far into the darkness as her eyes would allow. On her hands and knees, she followed a familiar path, turning right twice then left, ignoring the passages that would lead her to the kitchens or her mama’s bedroom or the downstairs grand hall. Jester knew where to turn like she knew how to draw.

The crawl spaces in the Chateau were known to more than just Jester but she was the only one who used them. They were her kingdom within her kingdom.

A little light bloomed into the tunnel. Jester slowed down and held her breath. Ahead, a thatched panel blocked her path and looked over a portion of a well-lit hallway. Jester knelt with her face close to the panel, quiet as she could be, and peered out.

Her mother was just fifteen feet away. She was speaking with one of the staff. There was discussion of a party, a dress, a necklace, and then a grand three-tiered cake. Marion wanted there to be a delivery made the next morning before sunrise. The staff was nodding and making notes in a little brown book. Jester listened for another minute as curiosity ate away at her on the inside like starvation.

From above, Marion looked small, so small Jester wondered for a moment why she had ever thought her mother was giant; always, her mother was above her, holding her, around her, so much larger and stronger than her.

“Is that you up there?”

Jester froze and held her breath. Her mother lifted her head towards the little panel, and her daughter watched her silently through the little diamond-shaped holes.

“Little one, are you hiding up there?”

“No, mama.”

“Oh, good then,” Marion said with a loud sigh of relief. “If my little Jester _were_ up there, I would be oh so frightened and surprised, for it would be a terrific joke to play on her mother. Her most wicked and cheeky trick yet.”

“Why, mama?”

“Because…” Marion answered, stepping away from the staff, who scurried away, and closer to the wall, “You are listening to secrets.” She put a finger to her red lips. “Such precious secrets.”

Jester gasped and pressed her hands to the panel, lifting it up from the frame and swinging it over her head on a hidden hinge. She leaned out into the hall. “Secrets?” she squeaked.

Marion flung her hands up in show-surprise. “Jester? It’s you?”

“Yes, and I am very clever for hiding here,” rushed Jester. “Now, what is the secret? What were you talking about just now, mama? Will you tell me, please?”

Her mother smiled and lifted her hand up to Jester, covering her little fingers with her own. “The surprise is for you, my sapphire. The cake and the lovely dresses and necklace. All for you.” She gently squeezed Jester hand where it rested on the lip of the porthole. “Only the best for my sapphire of course. I wanted to keep these things secret until tomorrow, but you are just too clever for me, Jester, too curious and clever.”

“Me?” Jester shuffled closer to the opening of her tunnel. “That is all for me, mama? Why though?”

Her mother looked at her with an odd smile. “Because it is your eighth birthday tomorrow,” she stated.

Oh, thought Jester, of course it was. The occasion had slipped her mind.

Her mother’s arms took her by the armpits and scooped up out of the porthole, then gently down to the carpeted floor of the hallway. She guided Jester back to her room where her grand red-wood door, framed by wrought bronze and mosaic, heralded the Ruby’s chambers, and quietly ushered her inside.

Her mother sat at her dressing table. Jester took her place, kneeling by her mother’s feet and tracing her fingers along the delicate patterns in the rug.

On the dresser dozens of bottles of perfume, pigments, and powders were neatly organised in their place, ready for Marion when she needed them. Jester knew them all and muttered the names of each product as it passed under her mother’s hands. Her favourite was not a bottle though. A beautiful ivory comb with a small series of blueish peals set into its stiletto-like handle was Jester’s absolute favourite thing on her mother’s dressing table.

Jester watched as her mother pulled the comb through her long, long hair the colour of rich red wine. For many years, her mother had kept the comb out of Jester’s reach and told her it was dangerous. She had told her that the handle was too long and sharp, that Jester might hurt herself on its point, that it was for grown-ups to use only. But Jester was quite sure that she was old enough to use it now. It was her birthday afterall.

“Be more careful,” her mother said very suddenly.

Jester tore her eyes from the beautiful comb. “About what?”

Her mother pointed her free hand at Jester. Jester followed her gaze down to her own stomach, where the snow had melted. The damp spot had almost entirely dried, but she remembered the chill. “You’re so clever, Jester, and so curious, but you must be careful.”

“It was only snow, mama.”

“Yes. It is only snow. And you are only crawling through a ventilation tunnel. But you may still find yourself hurt before even realising that there is danger bearing down on you. There is so much outside of these walls which I cannot protect you from, my Jester,” her mother said. “So much. The weather, the people, all kinds of beasts. I have no control over any of that. But inside the Chateau, this is our own little kingdom, and here we make the rules.”

It was something her mother had said before, Jester remembered, although she could not recall exactly when. Her mama always liked to remind her of why she was being kept safe.

Jester grinned up at her mother and nodded, saying, “I know, mama. I know, I know, I know. I’ll be super-duper careful all the time. And if you want, I can stop crawling around through the tunnels too…”

Marion laughed. “I would never ask that of you, precious.” She put the comb down and crouched before Jester, carefully folding her skirts under her knee. Smiling, she took Jester’s little hand. “You must stay curious,” she told her. “But careful.”

“Always, mama,” Jester said, cheerfully kissing her mother’s cherry-red fingers resting on her own. “I don’t want to make you scared, ever, not ever.”

“You are too precious, my sapphire,” she whispered.

Jester giggled. She twined her fingers together and smiled, then chewed her lip as she thought. “Can I ask you something, mama?” she asked, as her mother tucked her hair behind one ear. “Because it is my birthday, you know.”

“Anything, Jester.”

“Will my dad be here this time?”

Jester woken by the first flash of morning light that broke across the small room, let in by Beau who was yawning by the window shutters. She was stretching, gearing up for her morning workout routine and muttering to herself something about noisy neighbours. Jester didn’t recall hearing anything through the inn’s walls. She had slept rather soundly and in fact was sure that she’d had pleasant dreams, although couldn’t currently recall much of what she’d dreamt.

After some bland inn food and a half hour of bickering over their chosen route for the coming day, Jester emptied her and Beau’s room and left with her friends. It was one of those days when the sky was a uniform steel grey and the colours of the land seemed to dull and blur.

Jester squinted at the horizon, just past the edge of the little village they’d arrived at the night before and wondered if a fog was settling over this part of the valley. She stood by the cart. She never really felt cold in this kind of weather, and even on days that were frigid enough to freeze a breath before your nose, but still she held her cloak close to herself as she stared down the road. For a reason that she could not put her finger on she felt odd. She wondered if she’d slept in a strange position last night or eaten the wrong meat the evening before, if that was what made her feel so uncomfortable. Because, without reason or cause, as Jester stared down the road that led out of town, she had the unshakable feeling that the world dropped off into fog after a hundred feet or so and then utterly vanished into nothing.

She could hear the sounds of her friends counting supplies in the back of the cart. Beau and Fjord were elbow-deep in the group’s rations and debating the quality of some dried meats. Nott was fiddling with the horses’ bridles. Jester wondered again what was making her feel so chilly.

Then she remembered; the day before, shortly after noon, Yasha had left again. Strange thing to forget. Jester had almost been kept awake the previous night worrying about Yasha, missing her, wondering where she was.

With that mystery solved, Jester hopped cheerfully into the back of the cart. She landed next to Caleb who grunted and nearly toppled onto one side from the impact. He had one finger pressed to the surface of their map of the area that Fjord had bought the other day.

“Caleb,” she sung. “I had the _best_ dream last night and you’ll never guess what it was.”

“Is that so.”

“Guess what it was.”

“Hm. Maybe you were pulling a prank on somebody,” said Caleb as he held the map up between his face and Jester.

“You are so close.” Jester pulled the map down with one finger, creasing the vellum and making Caleb frown in displeasure. “I was with my mama and—oh! Did I ever tell you about the secret passageways in the Lavish Chateau?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Oh, cool. Well, I was hiding in one of those secret passageways and crawling through it and looking for my mama but then when I found her, she already knew I was there. Kinda creepy right? Well, she is very smart, so it is not that much of a surprise. Anyway, she opened up the hatch I was hiding behind and told me happy birthday, because it’s my birthday! And she gave me a cake, I think. I can’t quite remember how it ended.”

“It is your birthday, Jester?” Caleb was frowning at her. “I did not know.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “It was my birthday in the dream. It’s not my birthday _today_.” Jester paused. She felt herself stutter a little. “At least, I think so. No, of course not. I was dreaming and it was my birthday then. I was like, eight or something. It was a memory.”

Caleb’s frown deepened. He wasn’t following Jester in the slightest. “A dream or a memory, which was it?”

“Can’t it be both?”

He gave up on trying to understand her and, sighing, pulled the crumpled map back up to his face. “Dreams are never quite what they seem to be, Jester. You could be dreaming about a childhood memory but really you are worried about, eh, something that happened just the other day and you are, you know, processing your anxiety while asleep. Dreams are tricky that way.”

Jester scrutinized Caleb, who pointedly did not look at her but kept his eyes on the map. He was tracing his forefinger over a fork in the road about five miles away. “And what do you dream about, Caleb? What do you dream about most often?”

“Hm.” He was quiet for a moment. He lowered the map and squinted at Jester, saying dryly, “I am certain nothing ever quite as interesting as your dreams, Jester.”

The rest of the group joined them in the cart soon after Caleb retreated behind the map once again. They made their way out of the town quietly, Beau and Caleb watching the road ahead and Jester watching the slate-grey sky. The weather didn’t change at all as the day went on. There was no sign of the sun, so the thin black-bark trees their cart passed on the road cast no shadows at all, and there was no wind to shake their leaves.

Jester watched a pair of mangy crows circle a distance above Frumpkin, who was following the cart in the form of a red-brown falcon. The crows occasionally swooped down towards Frumpkin and croaked curiously in his direction, before he screeched back them in warning, and the two black birds cawed and fluttered and flapped away and stayed further away for another five minutes or so before they forgot their fear and flew closer again. The crows continued their dance for a while overhead. Jester wondered, as she watched, if Caleb were seeing through Frumpkin’s eyes at the time and if so, how much longer his patience would last. She giggled to herself as she imagined him on the bench at the front of the cart sitting next to Beau suddenly flailing and cursing in frustration, waving his arms as if driving away invisible crows.

This was the only thing keeping Jester occupied for the morning. Their travel was slow, the weather and landscape were equally grey, and everyone was quiet. Most were likely thinking about Yasha, Jester reasoned, as she looked about the others in the back of the cart. Beau and Caleb were morose on the driver’s bench. Nott was fiddling with a vial of yellowish liquid atop a crate. Fjord was napping.

Jester considered bringing out her notebook and doodling the two crows harassing Frumpkin.

Without warning, the cart slowed to a halt. Jester perked up, Nott swore as her vials wobbled a little on her makeshift worktable, Fjord snorted in his sleep. Caleb and Beau hopped off onto the damp grass out of sight and after a second Beau reappeared and slapped the wooden side of the cart.

“Piss break,” she announced, and vanished again, walking away towards the trees.

Caleb and Nott disappeared after Beau, both grumbling about sore knees from the ride. Jester stayed put. She’d decided to draw the birds, possibly next to a drawing of Caleb falling off the cart in his confusion. She swung her legs over the edge of the back of the cart and began rummaging around in her pack.

A hand landed on Jester’s shoulder. She jumped away and yelped in surprise, thinking everyone but her and Fjord had wandered away from the cart to stretch their legs. There shouldn’t have been anyone else behind her.

“Hey, it’s just me.”

Jester blinked. The moment of surprise turned to utter confusion for a moment. The moment passed.

“Oh, it’s you,” she sighed. Jester tried to take a deep breath without making it too obvious that her heart was still thudding against her ribs. “You were so quiet.”

Molly laughed. “I can be when I want to be,” he said. He dropped down next to Jester and leant back on his palms. There was still a thin bandage wrapped around his neck covering an injury from the day before. “Didn’t mean to scare you though, pet.”

“Oh, you didn’t. I just forgot you were still here I guess.”

He stared at her; his brow creased.

“On the cart, I mean,” added Jester. “I thought you had gone with the others for a walk or a poop.”

“Ah. Makes sense. Hey,” he began, picking at his bandage and leaning a little closer, “I saw you bothering Caleb earlier, back when we were in the town. What were you talking to him about? Anything juicy?”

Jester shrugged and fiddled with the fraying silk page marker of her sketchbook. “Not much.”

“Oh, come on!” Molly playfully smacked the back of his hand to Jester’s chest just below her throat. The impact was soft, and Jester barely felt it, but a strange reverberation began in her ribs where he hit her. The feeling passed after a second. “Won’t you tell me? I’m so terribly bored.”

“Well,” began Jester, “we were talking about dreams since I dreamt about my mama last night and stuff. I wanted to know what he thought about dreams and what they mean, because he’s supposed to be smart, but he didn’t make any sense. He said dreams are when you’re actually scared in real life and you’re still scared when you’re asleep or something. I don’t get it.”

“Sounds like the kind of shite Caleb would say,” Molly said with a grin.

“What do _you_ think dreams are?”

Molly thought for a moment. He kicked his legs out over the dewy grass and mud, tipping his head back to stare at the blank grey sky, and hummed low and lazily. “Well…I don’t claim to understand much at all. Least of all the sublime. Dream are…well, dreams are a different world, aren’t they? Much like the worlds you see in your head when you read a novel or hear a particularly good poem. It’s imagination without law.”

“You’re making even less sense than Caleb,” Jester laughed.

Molly grinned wider. “That’s my job, darling. But seriously. I don’t think dreams are anything, I think they’re _everything_. That’s why they scare me. When I dream…” He went quiet again. It was a colder quiet than before. After a moment he said, “My dreams are dark and wet. When I wake up, I can still taste them sometimes, and I hate it. I wonder if there might still be a part of that bastard which survives inside that world, the dream world, and he wakes up when I sleep. That’s the shit that scares me.”

Jester watched Molly chew his lip. He was staring at the treeline, but his gaze was fixed on something elsewhere. “Do you ever see your…his old memories when you dream?” she asked quietly.

“No. Or, well, maybe I do. I never remember anything once I wake up anyways.”

Jester wrapped an arm around Molly’s elbow, leaning into his side. She shoved her nose into the folds of his coat. She let the silence settle around them for a minute. Every now and then Fjord would snort or sigh in his sleep where he lay behind them.

“…Maybe I am a little scared, like Caleb said.”

“Hm? About what?”

“I’m not sure, that’s the thing. Everything is fine, although I’m a little worried about Yasha you know. I wish I knew where she was and what she’s doing and if she’s safe. But that’s it. Everything is totally fine. But I feel…I don’t know. I feel like there’s something I should be worried about anyway.” Jester lifted her face away from the fabric of Molly’s coat. The smell – of dirt mainly, but also of rich perfume, lotus and chamomile, oiled leather, and a little tobacco – was soothing and nostalgic. “I just wish I knew what it was.”

“Maybe you should be paying closer attention to your dreams. You might find that writing them down in a little book when you wake up, to remember them the next day, could help a bit.”

“You think so?”

“If nothing else it’ll be a laugh to read the stuff you write down.”

She bumped her head into his shoulder and giggled. “It would, it totally would. And…and doing what you said, keeping a little dream diary by my bed, would help me figure my dreams out?”

“Perhaps. You’d be a fool to take my advice on any good day. But maybe your mother was telling you something important. Maybe it’s something that will help you now, here, in the real world. Or maybe you’re beginning to receive prophetic dreams that’ll help us in the future! Who knows really?”

“Hm.”

Molly was smiling at her. He gently nudged her chin with one knuckle and said, “But don’t let it weigh on you, dear. Heavy thoughts aren’t healthy. After all, you’ve got a lot of people looking out for you, people who love you dearly, who wouldn’t stand to see you hurt. I should know. I’m one of them.”

A place deep in Jester’s heart ached like a big sharp splinter had become lodged between her lungs. A sob burst from her throat.

“Jester?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Molly,” she gasped, holding her burning cheeks. “You did nothing wrong. Nothing at all. But I don’t know why I am crying. Isn’t that funny.”

###### SORRY.

Something was throwing itself against Jester’s chest. It was also making a great deal of noise, and its howling and grunting combined with the repeated impacts against her collarbone quickly pulled Jester out from the heavy and comforting fog of sleep. She rolled over and flailed her arm over her head in the vague hope that whatever was bothering her would be knocked away. It worked; whatever was harassing her moved quickly away from her chest and a second later hit the floor by her bedside with a loud squeal.

Jester finally lifted herself from the mattress and leant over the edge of the bed where she had knocked away the strange thing that had woken her. In the dark she could make out the writhing shape of a small reddish creature hissing at her from the floorboards, its black eyes gleaming in the half-light.

“Sprinkle!” Jester rubbed her eyes and yawned, waiting for the weasel to wear itself out of its fury before even thinking of making physical contact. “What have I told you about doing that while I’m asleep? It’s so _rude_ , Sprinkle.”

All the fur on Sprinkle’s back rose up and the animal became for a moment a perfect sphere of rodential rage. It bared its teeth, seethed for a few seconds longer, then seemed to be satisfied by the attack and skittered off to hide underneath a wardrobe.

Jester stretched and let out a longer yawn as she rubbed at the smarting patch of bare skin above the collar of her nightdress that Sprinkle had assaulted. Her room was dark, lit only by the small pale blue mage-light that hovered over her door, and the door of every room in the house. There was no telling how early in the morning it was. She had still to adjust to Rosohna and its perpetual night-time. When she drew back the heavy and intricately woven curtains to find the city quiet and (unsurprisingly) dark Jester could only assume that she had been woken earlier than usual.

It may still be before sunrise, she thought. And if that were the case, she’d had to entertain herself until the others woke up, because there was no way she was getting back to sleep again tonight.

Jester turned back to her room, now lit a little by the ambient glow of the city outside her window, and folded her arms, and thought hard about what to do next.

There was something wrong.

Jester kept her arms folded and stood perfectly still. She was afraid that if she moved even a muscle that the strange suspicion would be disturbed and it would float away from her, like a cobweb on a slight breeze. She clung to that suspicion desperately.

There was something very wrong, and Jester had almost noticed what it was. But she also felt as if she was awfully close to forgetting.

She had dreamt of something that night before Sprinkle woke her up. It was still hanging in her mind like the echo of the final note in a song. She had been talking with…

Jester had dreamt of…

She had…

“Shit!” Jester uncrossed her arms and stomped her bare foot against the smooth wooden floor of her bedroom. “I almost had it!”

She didn’t worry if someone heard her or if one of her friends woke up. Instead, she knotted her hands in her hair and began pacing the length of her room, muttering, “This isn’t right. It’s not right, I feel it…I’m forgetting something, aren’t I?” She didn’t know who she was talking to in the moment, if not to herself, but a small part of her expected an answer.

Jester sat down cross-legged in the centre of the room and closed her eyes and tried to remember the day before. The group had arrived in Rosohna. Caleb had vanished soon after, saying he would be with Essek for the afternoon, and reappeared in time for dinner. Caduceus had made dinner. Dinner was a rich mushroom strew which glowed faintly with bioluminescence: apparently a local delicacy. Nott had bought a new pair of binoculars in the city. When Jester asked to try them, she’d looked through the wrong end and had though for a moment that she was going blind, to the group’s collective entertainment. She remembered the day before flawlessly.

Except, there was another set of memories laying just underneath and, like the faint marks and stains of a pencilled message that had been erased and rewritten, Jester could almost make it out.

The group had been leaving town. Jester had sat in the back of the cart. She had seen two crows harassing Frumpkin in the sky. Molly had spoken to her.

Jester began to panic. Her breaths became shallow and painful as she tried to reconcile the two memories fighting for space in her mind. Both days seemed just as real as each other, the details perfectly vivid, her friends perfectly normal and perfectly alive. Neither one seemed like the dream. But Jester knew one had to be a dream, since it was impossible that both days had taken place at once.

She focussed harder. She tried to remember exactly how the memory where she had been riding in the cart ended. Something about it was irritating her, as if the memory had been cut short, like somebody had taken a knife to it and sliced Jester away suddenly.

“Is this real?” Jester wondered aloud. She was startled by her own words. “Is this...am I dreaming right now?”

######  **OH DEAR.**

“Jester!”

She opened her eyes and gasped, and immediately choked on a mouthful of blood. A pair of strong and gentle hands were holding her head off the cold rough ground she was laying on. A second pair of hands were fiddling around her breastplate. There was movement in the corner of her vision, but everything was blurry and painful.

“Jester…” the voice said again. “Breathe slowly for me please, and don’t move yet.” It was Caduceus speaking, Jester recognised. She did as he said and stayed put but the next breath that she pulled into her chest sent pain rippling through her entire torso. She whined and coughed again.

“Oh, Jessie,” another voice said. The voice belonged to the hands that had just removed her breastplate. “You’re gonna be okay. Cad’s got you. You’re okay now.”

Jester lifted her head a tiny amount to finally look down at herself. There was a huge wound in her upper chest, a little above her right breast, and in the shape of a waning moon. A deep dark red stain was blooming across Jester’s linen dress. Looking at it made her dizzy.

“Ugh,” she said and let her head fall back into Caduceus’ hands. She could smell the metallic tang of her own blood rather strongly, and under that the wet stench of mildew and rot from the lair she lay in. But after a moment and a couple of deep breaths Jester was surrounded by grass and wildflowers. Caduceus had always smelled of spring. It was an awful shame, thought Jester, that the perfumes of his blossoms were not entirely smothering the stench of death.

“We finished off the fucker who did that,” grumbled Beau. She was kneeling nearby and held Jester’s now punctured breastplate on her lap. “You don’t have to stand until you’re all healed up again. Actually, I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”

Caduceus made a soft sound of agreement. “It won’t take long.”

“How long was I out?” asked Jester.

“Ten seconds, tops,” answered Beau. “All you missed was Yasha bisecting the thing that hurt you.”

“Is everyone…is anybody else hurt?” Jester craned her neck but couldn’t see any of the others, although she heard muffled voices coming from somewhere behind Beau. The cavern they’d been fighting in was still lit by Caleb’s lights and the walls and the craggy ceiling glowed a damp orange. As she laid her head back again Jester noticed the blinding pain had receded in her chest to nothing more than a dull ache, and even as she focused on it the pain shrunk further. Caduceus’ spell was working fast.

“No. Well, just a little,” Beau admitted, rolling one shoulder and wincing. “But we’re all good to go for now. Just waiting on you.”

Beau’s voice was uniform and calm, but Jester could see a crease of concern between her brows. Jester put a hand up – and only then noticed the dark smear of her own blood across her palm, and instead lowered it with a sigh. She wanted to comfort Beau. She could see the pain her own injury had dealt to Beau and wanted to heal her too.

After another minute Jester’s wound finally closed up and Caduceus helped her to her feet. Beauregard showed her the steaming pile of gore that had once been the aberration the group had encountered, then let her dig through the piles of loot that the creature had amassed within its lair, while Veth kept a watchful but not obsessive gaze over Jester from nearby. Fjord was watching her too, from where he sat at the mouth of the cavern wiping acid out of the seams in his breastplate. His eyes barely left her. Jester guessed her near-death experience must have been pretty brutal for her friends to be quite so concerned. They looked at her as if they expected her to shatter like glass any second.

Jester started to sulk once they returned to camp. She sat by the fire that evening and picked at her meal, a bowl of rabbit soup balanced between her knees, while she watched logs pop and murmur in the temporary hearth.

The others had noticed her glumness. Veth had given her two rings that she had fished out from the hoard. Jester now wore them on her middle fingers; they glittered like wet rock candy. While lighting the campfire Caleb had reminded Jester that she had been indispensable during the fight and had saved at least two of their lives before being knocked down, and that he would not have been able to survive the same blow that Jester had endured. Fjord had agreed with an awkwardness that betrayed the boys’ assurances.

“You two need to stop babying me,” Jester said, without any sincerity. He smiled up at Fjord, who immediately turned away and found himself fascinated by the bark of a nearby tree. “I could pick both of you up like little puppies in my hands.” She lifted two fists to demonstrate. “Like this.”

“Indeed, you could,” said Caleb. “I would never doubt your strength.”

“You’d better not. Or I’ll…I’ll, uh, I’ll throw you like a paper dart,” she decided.

Fjord laughed at that. “Yeah, I’d actually quite like to see you do that. No joke.”

“It’s not funny!” Jester crossed her arms, her meal wholly forgotten on her lap now. “I really don’t like seeing you worrying about me, you know.”

Caleb sat next to Jester on the felled tree trunk that served as a low bench and brushed some dirt from his sleeve. He was quiet for a moment, the kind of quiet that nobody interrupted because they could hear Caleb thinking behind the silence. “We do not like to see you sad either, Jester. I do not. We had assumed you were upset because you were the most hurt by that fight today. We were only trying to…hm, trying to assure you that we value your strengths as much as any other member of this little family.”

“You really thought that I was worried you guys think I’m weak?”

Now it was Caleb’s turn to be embarrassed. “When you put it like that…”

“We misread you,” Fjord interjected. He sat down on Jester’s other side. “I’m sorry for that, and for making things a little weird in the meantime. Do you want to talk about what’s on your mind?”

Jester stared down at her cooling soup.

The wound in her chest had stopped bleeding less than a minute after she had woken up. It had closed over and scabbed after she had drunk a small potion on her way out of the lair. The giant poppy-like stain on her dress was gone now; a series of cleaning cantrips lifted the blood away in little pink clouds. She had treated herself to a final healing spell before helping the others set up camp and with that the wound was only a moon-shaped silvery blue scar below her collarbone.

But there was still pain gnawing at her chest as she sat before the fire. It was there when she wasn’t talking or moving or thinking particularly hard. It glowed behind her sternum and tickled the skin that had only just healed over. If Jester had let her imagination run free, she would had thought that her chest was about to split open once more.

“I am thinking about how sad you would all be if I died.”

Neither man said anything at first. Fjord sucked in a breath and his hands fidgeted, but he didn’t move to touch Jester. Caleb closed his eyes. After a few seconds Jester wondered if she shouldn’t have said anything.

“It isn’t good for you,” Yasha muttered before the silence could stretch further. She was sitting nearby on the ground, cushioned by pine-needles. She had been the only other person close enough to overhear the conversation but her usual quietness had let her blend into the dark background of the forest. She quietly added, “You shouldn’t think about that.”

“I know,” said Jester. “It is hard though.”

“What brought this on?”

Jester shrugged. “Almost dying?”

Next to her, Fjord chuckled dryly. “I don’t mean to make light of this Jester, but might I remind you that only one of the four of us _has_ died.” He opened his mouth again to say something else but was silenced by Caleb sharply smacking his shoulder from around Jester.

“Fjord is being an idiot,” stated Caleb. His voice was soft. “But he is right in a way. We would not let you die, with all due respect. Just like with Fjord, and the other times one of us has, ah, fallen down, you would not be lost to us. You would come back. Today was a close call, _ja_ , it is true, but it was not the end. Not yet. You have a lot of life left, Jester. You should not spend it concerned with death.” He smiled an odd and crooked, but not unkind smile. “Death does not suit you.”

She smiled back at him. “Thanks Caleb. And Yasha.” Yasha nodded in reply. “It does sound pretty silly when I say it out loud.” Jester grinned a wide aching grin at her friends. “I hope that doesn’t happen again too soon! It would suck pretty bad if I kept getting sad like that.”

Yasha and Fjord seemed uncertain. They said little else to her for the evening, but Caleb stayed by her side. He reminded her to finish her meal or she would wake up starving and unhappy, as had happened on a few occasions before. She ate the rest of her cold stew and waited for Caleb to say something; she could practically hear the thoughts rattling around in his head.

She had always been delighted by Caleb, for all sorts of reasons. When they had first met, she had thought that he was rather weird but a potentially endless source of entertainment; he was filthy and awkward and learned and had a cat. Jester had been sure that she would never grow bored of him. And even under all the dirt and misery he was fun to look at. For there were never people who looked like Caleb in Nicodranas, where the humans were largely dark and wore their thick brown hair short and their beards neatly trimmed. Jester had first thought Caleb to be wonderfully strange with his fox-red hair and sand coloured skin. He was another foreign curiosity that she ate up like a starving man at the time that they met. But now Jester knew him, and her fascination had slowly softened into affection, his strangeness became familiar, and she was absolutely certain that she would never be bored of him.

After a while he said, “take this.” He was holding out a small knife. “I don’t use it anymore.”

Jester stared at the dagger, spoon in her mouth. He had surprised her yet again.

“Take it.”

“Why?”

“I used to keep it under my head while I slept. I don’t anymore. It used to make me feel safer, to an extent, while I was asleep. I don’t know if that would make you feel any better but…” He rubbed his mouth and frowned down at the dagger in his hand. He grunted and flipped the blade around to face himself, offering Jester the stained wooden handle. “Maybe you could put it under your pillow, hm? I am not suggesting you begin stabbing things that scare you, you are already capable enough, I am only…maybe it could ease your mind.”

Jester giggled but took the little dagger from him. She balanced it in her palm, watched it spin for a second like a compass needle, then placed it on her knee. It looked old but not particularly well-used. “How long have you had this, Caleb?”

“Perhaps four years. I must have stolen it from somebody a while ago. It was…it was a silly thing for me to have, really. I am not fast or strong like the rest of you, so I did not ever use it for much more than sharpening pencils and cutting my hair. But – at one time, for a while – it let me sleep.”

“Caleb’s dagger…” murmured Jester. She tapped the handle thoughtfully. “What do you call this?”

He looked startled. “I never gave it a name. It is not special or enchanted, like Yasha or Fjord’s swords. It is just a blade.”

“I meant in your language, _Caleb_ ,” she said.

“Ah.” He looked no less stunned. He flapped his mouth for a moment before saying, “-----"

“Huh,” said Jester, and then she forgot why she was confused.

“You should not call it my dagger though,” Caleb went on, “It was never mine, not really.”

Jester smiled and nodded. She carefully wrapped up the little dagger in its leather case and tucked it into a pouch at her hip. “It is funny how easily we can get silly ideas stuck in our heads, right?”

“Oh, _ja_. I suppose.”

“A stupid idea, one that doesn’t even make sense, you think of it for a second and then you’re obsessed for _hours_. It might even keep you awake. It nibbles at your mind like a mouse. Chewing away, nibble nibble, until every other thought is eaten away and it’s the only thing you can think of. And it might not even be sensible at all!”

“I think you are about to tell me something, Jester.”

“Yes. I have the worst feeling that I am being tricked.”

“How so?”

“Things are so strange!” she exclaimed, flapping her hands at her sides, frustrated. “I am trying _so hard_ to explain what it is, but…it’s like my brain won’t let me. It’s weird. I _know_ that something is wrong, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

Caleb pressed a thumb to his lower lip in thought. He hummed. “I’m sorry, Jester, but I don’t know what it is you mean.”

“I can’t explain,” said Jester, grimacing. “But this doesn’t feel real.”

## WOULD YOU STOP THINKING SO HARD.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ideally this fic would have been a single chapter of about 15k words but ao3 as a medium sadly doesn't accommodate well for that kinda format. As it is, chapter one is the longest by far.  
> If you're liking this, leave a little love letting me know. This was something silly I'd been working on on-and-off as a warmup exercise while procrastinating my ACTUAL creative writing dissertation. I make good decisions.


	2. Chapter 2

Jester fell over. Her head had bounced off the surface of the stained table beneath her elbows, jolting her awake.

She hissed in pain and rubbed her forehead. Beau was giggling into her tankard, sitting opposite Jester, and watching her grumble, her other arm slung around a quietly yawning Fjord.

“…turning in for the night, prob’ly,” Fjord was saying. His face was flushed a dark green. There were a number of empty tankards on the table between them, though more densely populated around Nott who was fast asleep on her folded arms and snoring happily to Jester’s right. “See you girls tomorrow.” With that Fjord unhooked himself from Beau’s arm and staggered away in the general direction of the door that lead upstairs.

Jester watched him go. She had the strange feeling that she had missed an opportunity, as if she hadn’t had the chance to speak to him for weeks, although they had been travelling together all day. She swallowed the feeling down along with a mouthful of lukewarm milk.

Across the tavern a small group of bards were playing what was probably the last tune of the night. It was a cheerful song but only one patron was singing along to the lyrics. Molly didn’t seem to be bothered by this at all; he was by no means a talented singer but he was making up for it with sheer enthusiasm as he chanted, “Red her cheeks as rowans are, bright her eye as any star, fairest o' them all by far…” and Jester was impressed that either she or Nott were capable of falling asleep in the midst of it.

But the day had been long, and the ache in her back and shoulder spoke to it. Jester considered following Fjord’s example before she might nod off and hit her head again.

“Hey, Jessie,” said Beau. Her torso was sprawled over the table, fingers brushing Jester’s elbows, chin resting on the sticky surface, eyes half-closed. She tapped her fingertips against the woodgrain and wiggled her brows. “Saw you lookin’ at Fjord.” She grinned up at Jester, a little unfocusedly. “You’ve sure been lookin’ at him a lot lately, huh?”

Jester delicately took a sip from her milk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Beau. I look at you all equally I think you will find.”

“Naahhh, you totally look at him more. You, like…you look at him like _oh_ , _you’re so handsome and cool_ ,” slurred Beau, not even trying to mimic Jester’s voice, “ _And you’re also kinda awkward too, which is very attractive to me._ ”

Jester, despite her best efforts, began to giggle.

“ _And you’re tall and good at stabbin’ stuff, which rules, but you’re also like, super fuckin’ weak which is attractive to me too ‘cause I can like, fantasise about pickin’ you up and swinging you over my shoulder and carrying you away into the sunset_ ,” Beau finished with a wide grin. “That’s what your face says when you look at him, dude.”

“No, none of that was true.” But Jester couldn’t hide her smile. “I only look at him because he has a cute butt.”

Beau made a pained noise. She rapped her nails against the table and grumbled, “Would it kill you two to just do something about this? I can’t take it.”

“Do what about what?”

“The sexual tension, Jester. It’s killing me.”

“If this is what we are talking about now,” said Caleb suddenly, sitting on Jester’s right side and staring pointedly at the open pages of a book, “I think I will also excuse myself.”

“Aw,” Jester began, about to ask him to stay a little longer before Molly abruptly appeared between their shoulders, slapped firm hands down onto each of them, and gasped out, “Caleb Widogast, are you flustered by the mere discussion of healthy sexual tension between your fellow party members?”

Caleb’s stare was burning a hole into the tavern table.

“Oh my,” said Molly, straightening up and putting a hand to his cheek. “That is something I must add to the growing list of things we know about you, and I must say I’m delighted.” He swung a leg over the bench Beau now sat on alone and straddled it, keeping an eye on the band. He stunk of alcohol almost as much as Beau. “Next thing we’ll learn that you keep a scrapbook.”

“Don’t tease him,” said a small, muffled voice from the pile of rags that Nott had turned into ten minutes prior. Her cloak shuffled for a moment while the three watched and listened for more. But she seemed to get over her frustration quickly and was still and snoring again a second later.

Molly stared at Nott for a moment longer before barking out a laugh. “Understood!” He took a swig from Beau’s tankard. “Nothing to be ashamed of, Caleb,” he said, pointing the tankard at the man and swaying in his seat. “You’re right in thinking that Jester and Fjord are horribly embarrassing, although I am tempted to agree with Beau on the matter.”

Jester wanted badly to change the topic of conversation. “Hey Caleb,” she said, maybe a little too loud because Caleb flinched and turned his still wide-eyed gaze up to her at once. “What are you reading?”

“Oh, ah, I am, um.” He blinked down at the book, like he had forgotten it was there. “It is, ah, an encyclopaedia of wildlife native to the valley. It will be helpful to me, I think, and to you all too because we have been relying on Frumpkin to scout many dangerous areas of late. Hm.”

“Oh, you’re looking for new Frumpkins?”

Caleb looked at Jester like she had suggested he eat his shoe. “No. That is not what I am doing. Why would I…? No. I am researching more forms that he might take that would allow him to blend into the landscape while also fulfilling the—the—his role in this group.”

“That’s what I meant,” said Jester, folding her arms. Caleb didn’t seem to be listening anymore. He was watching Molly carefully unwind Beau’s hair from its usual fastening and begin to braid it, section by section, while humming along to the band’s dwindling tune. Beau, for all her conviction earlier in the evening that she would last the longest, was drooling onto the table. For that moment at least, Caleb was transfixed. The look on his face sat somewhere between confusion and longing.

Not wanting to break the moment, Jester kept her mouth shut. She leant to her right just far enough to get a look at the book beneath Caleb’s hand. There were illustrations of birds at the top of each of the two pages. One was small and speckled, the other looked like a blackbird with a small crest of red feathers.

Jester squinted at the text on the page. It was handwritten but perfectly legible, however…

Jester stared harder at the pages and shuffled on the bench to get a closer look over Caleb’s shoulder. The light in the tavern was dimming with the deepening night, but she shouldn’t have had any trouble seeing well enough to read even if every flame was doused at once; her eyes were sharp even for a tiefling.

But as hard as Jester focussed on the pages, it was total gibberish. She read whole sentences to herself in her head, but the words made no sense. She began at the beginning of the same sentence, certain that it was written in simple Common, but the meaning escaped her again and again. She tried focussing on a single word and picked out each letter like candied cherries from a fruit cake. She sliced and examined the names and terminology from every angle. But the word would always thrash in her grasp and escape. She chased the phrases across the page, trying to trap and corner them into the margins but they fizzled and burst and left her with nothing but the heavy sense that she had discovered something deeply _deeply_ wrong.

Jester looked up from the horrible pages. Molly was still happily braiding Beau’s hair. Beau and Nott were still snoozing. Caleb was rubbing the heel of his palm into his eye and yawning. The band was still playing.

Everything in the tavern was normal. There was nothing around them that might have suggested that something was amiss, or strange, or unnatural. There was no fizz in the air to indicate the presence of magic, and her friends were behaving like everything was fine and safe. Jester had nothing to fear.

But her heart was racing, and a sick coldness was spreading across her skin. She stood up and got away from the table. Her friends didn’t react.

Jester pressed her palms over her eyes and hissed through her teeth. “This is crazy,” she said to herself. “You are going crazy! What the fuck!” She turned a half-circle and dropped her hands. She was facing the wall of the tavern, a couple feet from the whorls of oak in the planks, dark patterns that looked like warped faces or cream in coffee. Jester glanced over her shoulder. Her friends were where they were, doing what they were doing before, like they hadn’t seen her stand up and talk to herself aloud.

It should have been scary, Jester knew that it should be deep inside herself, deeply profoundly terrifying, but despite that she was calm. She looked away from her friends. She closed her eyes and tried to focus.

There was a fog over her memory. She couldn’t put a clean timeline of memories together, which was in all honesty far from the scariest symptom of her predicament, but it was also her biggest clue. However, she suspected that if she probed her foggy memory too hard, she would quickly wake up somewhere else all over again.

So instead, she took a different approach, and opened her eyes. She decided to take a stand.

“What is happening?” she called out to nobody in particular. “Why is everything so strange? Why do I feel like I’m dreaming? Is this a curse?” She paused. Cautiously, she asked, “Am I in hell?”

It was a silly question.

Quickly, she called out again, “Answer me, please! I know that this is a silly question. But please just tell me where I am! What is happening to me?”

“Just tell me!”

“Answer me, _now_.”

“I can hear your silence. I know you’re there.”

##### Very strange.

“It _is_ strange. That is why I am asking you what is happening. Now would you please answer me.”

##### Who, me?

“Yes. You! Speak up please. You’re the only person besides me here who is even real anyways, right?”

I’m a little taken aback. I did not expect you to notice my presence at all, Jester.

“I’m not a total _idiot_.”

No, you’re right. You are not.

“So…answer me, oh invisible omniscient weirdo. Where am I? Who are you? Why is everything so weird?”

Slow down, please. Ah…You’ve really made a mess of everything. And it’s only going to become messier now that you’ve actually noticed me. This was not meant to happen. Hm…first things first, I need to change tenses.

“What does that mean?” she asks.

Also, I might as well speak to you in person since this narration thing has become entirely obsolete. Really, I’m rather impressed with you! But this has derailed my plan entirely.

“Oh. Thanks, I guess.”

The scene around Jester is more like a tableaux than a tavern. This shift happened shortly after she turned away from her friends. The people in the room behind her are stiff and silent, their faces blurred and indistinct, the colours of their clothing and surroundings faded like old ink, the perspective and scale and proportions not-quite-right. It is a child’s drawing of a tavern.

Meanwhile, Jester, arms crossed and eyes wide, watches in giddy awe as a shape takes form before her. What at first was simply a series of knots in the wooden wall takes on form. The whorls bend and darken and become the outline of a tall man. Then, colours bleed through the wood and the figure moves forwards, and there I am, with wild red hair and a long face and a thin smile. Really, it’s as if I always was there, and perhaps I had been.

“I know you,” Jester says slowly. “I’ve seen you before somewhere, I think.”

“You do know me,” I answer.

“Why don’t I remember who you are?”

“Because…hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you just yet.”

“Am I dead?”

I laugh. “No, no you are not. My name is Artagan, by the way.”

“That’s a lovely name,” she says with complete sincerity. She then squints. “Why do I feel like you’re lying to me?”

“Believe it or not, this is one of the first times in your life, Jester, that I have been entirely honest with you. You may have guessed already that this world around you–” I motion to the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the strange blobby estimations of other people who float around in the periphery of the scene, “—is not entirely real. This is a world of my creation. Of _our_ creation, even. You and I are the only people here who are alive. You were right, Jester, on least one of those occasions that you shouted out your guesses into the air.”

Jester doesn’t like the sound of that. She places her hands on her hips and takes a step closer. “But we _are_ both alive?”

My grin falters. She is damned perceptive and can smell my discomfort.

A grin of her own cracks across her face. “Discomfort?” she echoes.

“Shit. I forgot about that,” I laugh awkwardly. “This is a world I created, with the intention that I would be narrating your every move, your surroundings, your thoughts and feelings. That is one…quirk of the device.”

“Am I hearing your thoughts?” she croons, leaning closer in and practically glowing with glee. “Can I read your _mind_? Can I hear your deepest _secrets_?”

“Ah. Not quite. I can still keep plenty of secrets from you, dear one, I only need be careful what I include within the narration from here on. This is already getting rather weird.”

She pouts. It’s cute, but not enough to win me over.

“That’s mean. I could try being cuter?”

I laugh again. It is a healthy laugh this time. “Jester, sit down please. I will talk with you if that is what you wish. And I will answer some questions if answers are what you wish for.”

We sit at an empty table. Her friends remain where she left them, idly buzzing and flickering in place like candle flames. She sits facing away from them.

“So,” I begin, steepling my hands, “What was it that gave me away? How did you realise something was afoot? I put an awful lot of effort into creating this place for you, Jester, and it pains me not to know where I slipped up, so to speak.”

“Hmm. Lots of things really. Not that you did a bad job!” she added quickly. “Just that…well, you missed some stuff.”

“Ah, I see. My memory is not perfect, sadly.”

“Caleb was super weird. Like, weirder than usual.”

“He is a weird one, you’re right about that.”

“Why was his voice all fuzzy that one time?”

“Neither of us speak his language, darling. I couldn’t fabricate Zemnian for you.”

She thinks for a moment. Her face scrunches up when she thinks so hard like this. Finally, she says, “His book was weird too. When I tried to read it, it was like the words were all watery and slippy. It’s the same as how it’s like to read in a dream.”

“Hm. Well spotted.”

“So, this is a dream?”

“Yes and no,” I say with some satisfaction. “These are memories reconstructed by your imagination, with some help from my magic and knowledge. We are dreaming together, Jester.”

She leans over the table suddenly with a cheeky glow about her. “Could I dream about _anything_?”

“Anything you are somewhat familiar with, yes.”

“Could I dream about a city made totally of caramel? What about…what about if I dreamt that I had wings, like Yasha, and that I could fly. Could I dream—”

I halt her with a raised palm. “Whilst this is certainly a dreamscape of sorts, it must still follow some rules of logic, sadly. I constructed the space to be particularly convincing to you, especially. I had planned to fool you for much longer. If your imagination had overflowed into this space and caused…you to grow wings, for example, it would not be quite so realistic would it? There are parameters in place for a reason. But do not worry. Dreams are one of my fortes and so long as you do not think _quite so hard_ about the details of this reality, it can be rather convincing.”

She’s rather put-out now and leans back in her seat. “Oh. That sucks.” Although her usual airy energy has not dimmed, I can tell that she’s thinking again. She asks, “So why am I still here?”

“Hm?” I feign confusion.

“Your plan failed, Artie. I know that none of this is real and you’ve been tricking me. It was a nice trick, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want to stay here.”

“Oh? You don’t?”

“Of course not! Everything here is…well, it’s only _just_ close enough to reality for me to be fooled for a moment. But there’s _just_ enough missing for me to stop and think. And I’m always going to think about it. I can tell it’s not real and I’m never going to be okay with that, alright? I want to be talking with the real Beau, not a Beau stitched together and made up from my memories and imagination. I want to wake up for real. I’m sorry.”

“That’s a shame,” I say. “Because I can’t let you wake up for real.”

“Then maybe I want you to go away,” Jester says with sudden conviction.

“If I ‘went away’ you would be left alone. You would be floating through nothing at all, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, thinking nothing. I am the one telling you this story, Jester, if you kick me out of the story then there would be no story to tell. Only silence.”

She looks intensely frightened for a moment. Her lips press together into a thin line and her hands shake before she clenches them and hides them under the table.

“And you don’t want that, do you?”

She shakes her head.

Jester is quiet for a short while. I suspect that she is thinking quite seriously about something.

“I think I know what’s happening to me, Artagan.”

“Do you?”

“You’re telling me a story.”

I say nothing.

“Your story is the only thing keeping me from…keeping me away from something awful. You’re protecting me.”

I smile at her. I hope it is a comforting one.

“Like…it’s like when my mama told me stories before I went to sleep. You’re telling me this story to make me happy. Maybe to make me feel safe. Or to teach me something important, a lesson or a warning, although I am not sure what it is you are trying to tell me just yet.”

“You’re a very smart girl, Jester.”

“And this isn’t the real world. This is just my memories and wishes, all chopped-up and jumbled-up, like a diary that’s been ripped open and got all the pages out of order. The real world is…it’s happening somewhere else far away from me. All of my friends and my mama are somewhere else right now.”

“Yes.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Not very long at all.”

“Okay. It feels like I’ve been here for a while though.”

“Dreams can be like that. Time dilates in this kind of place, so although you’ve dreamt weeks’ worth of dreams, back in the material place not even a second has passed.

She looks off at an oblique spot in the distance, furrowing her brow in thought. “I think I’ve been to places like this before. Other planes, pocket planes, where there are different rules for how reality works.”

“Hm. This is a little bit like your wizard friend’s pocket dimension, I suppose, but much more…more malleable. I am enormously powerful afterall. There are very few rules at all which apply to me.”

Her dour expression melts away finally. “That is a relief…” She giggles. “I have such a powerful friend! Wowie, that is a relief.”

“That’s right. I am your friend. And I am certainly keeping you safe, Jester.” I lean in over the table to meet her eyes. “I promise you that. Your friends may believe differently sometimes, but I always have your safety in mind. Anyways, in this world that I have created nothing at all can hurt you. You are safe and you are happy. You _are_ happy right now, aren’t you, Jester?”

Her face is still. Jester is smiling, but her expression is frozen. It’s a little unnerving. “I am.”

“Good,” I say, relaxing.

“Now, tell me what is happening in the real world.”

“Oh, don’t give me the silent treatment, Artie.”

“Not even any narration? That’s mean.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.”

“You’re apologising?” I ask.

“Sure. I guess,” she laughs, “but I don’t really know what for. Please just come back. It’s kinda scary being here alone.”

The tavern scene comes back into focus after the momentary absence of arcane support. The flames burn brighter, and the music grows louder, one of Jester’s friends behind her laughs about something neither of us can hear. Jester cheers up immediately.

“Okay! So, you won’t tell me why you’ve trapped me here.”

“Oh, don’t use that word. I haven’t trapped you, Jester, it’s for your own good, I promise.”

“Yeah, yeah, anyway,” she says, waving a hand. “You won’t tell me _why_ I’m here. Will you tell me who you are?”

That gives me pause. “Well, I suppose so. I blocked that memory in the first place thinking that it would keep you from contacting me and conjuring my presence within a memory. Being here with you in person, talking with you, while also maintaining the appearance of a reality around you is a little difficult.”

“Oh, I can tell.” She nods thoughtfully. “The narration has become a little sparse lately.”

“Don’t get cheeky now. I’m working rather hard.”

Jester’s expression flickers as one of the gaps in her memory is suddenly filled. She blinks and shakes her head, then laughs in my face. “Woah, Artie! That’s so funny,” she gasps between bursts of laughter, “There are so many time in those memories when I would have called on you, or mentioned you, or prayed to you, or used a gift you taught me, or asked for your help, if I had known who you were. Those memories are _so_ strange now, in retrospect.” She laughs again. “It’s like there’s a big empty gap where you should be. It makes me seem so lonely.” Her laughter fades into a sigh. “I missed you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

She pouts. “Okay, technically I didn’t. _Technically_. But I’m missing you in retrospect.”

“What would you like to do now?”

“Hm?”

“You could go anywhere, see anything, talk to anyone you’ve ever met. What would you like to do, Jester? I’ll send you there.”

She falls into deep thought again. As she thinks, her hand idly creeps up to rub at her chest, just below her throat, as if there’s a phantom pain bothering her there. She rests her chin on her other hand and half-covers her mouth as her eyes darken with thought. After a moment she says, “Can I see my mama again?”

“Of course,” I answer, “I can send you to her if you’d like. I can disappear into the background too, so you can have your privacy again.”

“If that’s okay? I want to speak with her,” she says, half muffled by her palm. “I miss her.”

“Completely understandable, Jester. Enjoy yourself,” I say, and wave my hand. The tavern melts away. I melt away. Jester is alone again.


	3. Chapter 3

For the first time Jester woke up remembering. Her cheek was pressed to a soft velvety surface, and her skin was being warmed by sunlight, and she could hear the unmistakable sounds of busy cheerful Nicodranas coming from somewhere above and behind her, but she remembered everything. She knew she wasn’t really in Nicodranas, as perfectly real as it seemed to be.

She opened her eyes. Her mother was sitting on her bed, among her pillows and throws, reading a small book. The room was lit by sunlight from the window above Jester – who lay on the large and well-cushioned window seat below – and everything smelled of lavender and camomile tea. The rest of the Nein were in the city going about business, topping up their supplies and of spell components mostly, and enjoying the much-needed break from action and adventure. Jester had all the time in the world with her mother.

“Mama?”

Marion looked up from her book with a smile. “Yes, Jester?”

“How long was I asleep?” asked Jester, rolling off the window seat and wandering over to the dressing table, still strewn with bottles and hair accessories like she had always remembered.

“Oh, not long. An hour perhaps. What did you dream of? Anything nice?”

Jester hummed and picked up a bottle of her mother’s lavender perfume. She uncorked it but didn’t apply it, she only took a slow sniff of the stuff and let the waves of nostalgia wash over her for a moment. “I was dreaming of all kind of things. I dreamt I was travelling with my friends, and fighting monsters with them, and saving their butts, like usual. I dreamt of you too, mama.”

“Oh?” Marion put her book down and folded her hands on her lap. She listened to Jester in the way she always did, glowing with love like it could barely be contained within her. “What was I doing in your dream?”

“It was my birthday. I crept up on you by crawling through the tunnels in the walls, remember those? I can barely fit through half of them now because I got so big,” she giggled. “But anyway. I crept up on you in a hallway and I overheard you talking about my presents and my cake.”

“I remember,” murmured Marion. “I remember that day. It was your eight birthday.”

Jester pulled the seat from her mother’s dresser and sat down. “I asked you if my dad would be coming to see me that year.”

“I remember perfectly.” Marion wasn’t looking at Jester but was still smiling. “I didn’t know what to tell you at the time. I wish I could have said something. I wish I could have answered you, given you a promise. Any kind of promise.”

“But you gave me so much, mama!” Jester exclaimed. “Do not apologise, please! You still gave me so much. It’s not your fault I didn’t see him.”

Marion looked up at Jester. “Maybe another birthday, hm?”

A coldness seized Jester. She chewed her lip and nodded, and answered, “Yes, maybe,” before frowning and shaking her head. “Definitely,” she said, loud and firm. “All three of us! We will eat cake together and it’ll be super great!”

Marion laughed in her quiet and soft way; the laugh that Jester was well-familiar with. She was so life-like that Jester’s throat became tight and her eyes prickly. It was a conscious effort to remind herself that this was a dream, that this was not really her mother, that something much darker must have been happening in the real world. Jester schooled her expression back into her usual bright smile as her mother smiled back at her.

“I would love to see that,” said Marion. “Our funny little family.”

The coldness hadn’t entirely left Jester just yet. She swallowed some of her nerves and took a deep breath. “And then, in my dream, you told me to stay safe. You reminded me to be careful no matter where I was and no matter what I was doing. You told me not to do anything too dangerous. I guess hearing you say that to me in the dream means a lot more now than it did back then.”

Her mother was looking at her funny now. “This is one very detailed dream you must have had, Jester.”

“Yes, I guess it is,” said Jester, her voice quiet. “But it was an important memory.”

Marion sat up straighter in her bed. She frowned at her daughter and cocked her head, spilling wine-red hair over one shoulder, not understanding Jester’s words.

“And I am so, _so_ sorry mama, but I am going to do something extremely dangerous now. I wouldn’t have done it right here in front of you, but I needed to trick Artie you see. He thinks he’s keeping me here to protect me. So I needed him to think that I was safe. I am sorry.”

Jester took the ivory comb from her mother’s dresser and plunged the long thin handle deep into her chest.


	4. Chapter 4

Jester woke up.

This time it was real. Jester couldn’t immediately say why it was that she was so sure, but she was certain that there was no illusion or dream-quality to this reality. Artagan had not woken her this time. She had finally woken herself up and she had only a split-second to realise that she had succeeded before her world was engulfed in pain.

There was a blade in the dark. Most of it was embedded deep into her sternum. The hand holding the blade belonged to a tall figure in black who loomed over her bed in her room in the house in Rosohna. Bright white pain radiated from Jester’s rib out to her fingertips and her teeth and her hips. She was too shocked to scream and practically blinded by the pain, sure that whatever was happening was killing her.

Her room was pitch black. This was the next thing that Jester registered in the single shuddering heartbeat after waking. It was strange; there should have been a small blueish mage-light hovering over her door and washing the room in a dim glow this time of night, but there was only a vacant space over the lintel. One of the window’s to their left was wide open and letting in a biting cold breeze into the room. Beau’s bed was empty.

Jester made a number of quick assumptions: the assassin had activated a zone of anti-magic, rendering her defenceless, cutting her off from receiving help from her patron on this plane, and thus snuffing the mage-light. The assassin had entered through her window. Beau was currently in Yasha’s room.

She had no spells. No holy flames or healing magic or telepathic cries for help to her friends elsewhere in the building.

Then came the next assumption: if she didn’t save herself soon, she would be dead.

Jester moved one hand. She didn’t reach out for the assassin, or for the blade still sending pulses of sick pain through her chest. She stuck her hand underneath the pillow she had slept on and wrapped her shaking fingers around the handle of Caleb’s dagger.

The small blade buried itself into the assassin’s left thigh. Blood immediately began pouring from the tiny wound, where Jester had expertly cut where a major artery lay in most humanoids’ anatomy, to her dizzy pleasure.

The assassin grunted and jerked back in reaction. This had the unfortunate effect of twisting the blade in Jester’s chest.

Jester went blind for a second. The pain exploded past sensations and sent her into simple flashes of colour.

Meanwhile, there was movement beside her bed. Jester gasped and moved her head sideways, feeling like she weighed a thousand tonnes, and only now noticing that she had arched her back far off the bed in her whole-body rictus.

The assassin was frantically clawing at their face and grunting in frustration, standing a couple paces from her bed. A small furry creature was clinging persistently to the assassin’s face. The mage-light was glowing dully above her bedroom door.

Jester took a second gasp of bloody-tasting air. She rolled onto her side, aware of the drag of metal against her ribs and precious organs, aware of the mere seconds of time that Sprinkle was buying her, aware of how close she was to losing consciousness, and slapped a hand down onto her bedside table, onto her holy symbol, where it lay on top of the stupid little dream diary that Molly had convinced her to begin keeping, and screamed out “ _HELP_ ,” before casting Dimension Door.

She assumed that she must have lost consciousness at some point because the next thing she saw was Caduceus’ face. He was wide awake and staring at her in concern, and Jester was fairly sure that he was holding her in his arms.

“Ducie?” she tried to say, but her throat only produced a horrible bubble of blood. She coughed, and Caduceus tilted her over to allow her to clear her lungs. He must have healed her wound because Jester could now move without going blind in agony. But her nightclothes were soaked through with blood. She felt the cold metal of her holy symbol biting into her palm where she held it tight enough to sting.

“Careful,” said Caduceus. “You’re safe now.”

Jester, still resting on her side in Caduceus’ lap, stared at the little leather-bound book laying open on his bedroom floor only two feet from her head. It was open on a page she had written from a couple of months back. She had drawn herself and Yasha throwing steel balls over a field during a strange festival she had dreamt of. It had been a good dream, that much she remembered now.

“I’m going to give you another spell before we go anywhere,” Caduceus was saying. “That thing you got stabbed with had some kind of a poison to it. I’m going to remove that now.”

A wash of magic spread from Jester’s shoulders where Caduceus gently touched her and the lingering nausea and shake in her hands finally subsided. She sighed and wiped blood from her lips as she reached out and took the diary from the floor. “Thanks, Caduceus,” she said, closing the book and holding it close to herself, not thinking of the blood almost dripping down her front.

“That’s alright. Take it easy now.”

His calm was unnerving Jester. Suddenly she jolted upright and gasped. “The assassin,” she cried. “There’s an assassin in my room! They tried to kill me! They might still be there, Caduceus, we have to stop them, tell the othe—”

He stopped her with a raised hand. “Beau and Fjord are handling it, I think,” he said in that same calm tone as always. “I heard some shouting and running as soon as you arrived. Then I heard a couple of thuds. The fight must have resolved itself by now.”

Jester listened hard for a moment. It was true; she could hear from the direction of her bedroom downstairs a number of voices. The loudest was Beau’s, but she couldn’t make out any distinct words. Jester could only hope it was good news.

Slowly, she got to her knees on the stone floor. She pressed her holy symbol to her chest and began muttering a prayer. Tendrils of familiar green light wound around her forearms and began to curl around her chest where the wound had all but closed up, while Caduceus poked his head out of the door to his shack. The final touch of healing magic smoothed the skin that had been broken and eased the bruising. She was still drenched in blood, but Jester was at the very least confident that her friends would no longer mistake her for heavily injured, and she could comfortably endure any oncoming vigorous hugs.

The usual fingerprint (as best as Jester could describe the feeling) that Artagan left whenever he answered Jester's prayers was there, but it was somewhat uncertain. Jester got the impression that he was granting her magic at arm's length for the moment. She wondered if he was embarrassed. Or perhaps he had been irritated by her disobedience, for all that he usually encouraged disobedience. Whatever the reason Jester felt it was worth the risk.

There was shouting from outside. Jester joined Caduceus at the door in time to see Veth arrive from the trapdoor across the roof, panting and pushing her thick brown hair away from her eyes, with her small crossbow pinned underneath one arm. She looked like she’d been dragged backwards out of her bed.

“Is Jester here?” she gasped, before locking eyes with the person in question under Caduceus’ elbow. “Oh! Thank gods!” She all but fell to her knees in relief. “There’s so much blood in your room, Beau thinks you got fucking melted.”

Jester had to giggle. “No, I’m okay. I did get _pretty_ fucked up though. I’m okay now, thanks to Caduceus.”

“Okay, alright.” Veth gathered herself and straightened her nightgown. She cleared her throat and began casting her sending spell and pointed it down through the roof, saying, “she’s all okay. We’re coming down to you now. You can reply to this message, but please don’t shout, I’ve got a fuckin’ migraine coming on.”

Veth finished and immediately flinched, massaging her temple. Jester smiled in sympathy. She could hear Beau’s reply, her frantic muffled shouts, coming from somewhere downstairs.

“Okay, now the whole Xhorhaus is awake for sure,” sighed Veth. “Let’s get you down there to face the music.”

Jester followed her downstairs onto the main landing of the second floor. Everyone was indeed awake, all in their nightclothes, some holding weapons, some confusedly wielding miscellaneous items from their bedrooms, and all wearing matching expressions of anxiety. Once Jester was in view four wide pairs of eyes landed on her.

“Jester!” several voices cried at once. She was instantly enveloped in a crushing hug from Beau, who had simply got to her the fastest. A split second later she was embraced from the other side by Yasha, which had the effect of entirely cutting off light and all air from Jester’s lungs. She laughed and swayed on her feet.

“How did this happen?” asked Fjord’s voice from somewhere on the other side of Yasha. “What even happened, really?”

Yasha peeled herself away and motioned in the direction of a dark body slumped against the hallway wall. It was the assassin Jester had seen in her room. The individual had lost their cloth mask, revealing the unfamiliar face of a half-orc woman. She was unconscious and heavily beaten. “She broke into Jester’s bedroom through her window,” said Yasha darkly. “She had a lock-picking kit on her and a poison dagger.”

“She also created a zone of anti-magic, by the way,” added Jester, still tightly held by Beau. She idly rubbed a hand over Beau’s tensed shoulders while speaking to the others, as Beau kept her face firmly buried in the crook of Jester’s neck. “So that was why I couldn’t heal myself or hurt her or message you guys or anything at all. I had to _literally_ stab her with an itty-bitty knife, then wait for Sprinkle to attack her before I could get away. I totally would be dead right now if it weren’t for Caleb’s knife and Sprinkle. It was a pretty good plan.”

“Yeah,” said Veth dryly. “Definitely one of the best almost-successful assignation attempts I’ve had the privilege of stopping. Eight outta ten.”

“And you’re all okay now, Jester,” Fjord said, coming closer and putting a hand on her cheek, turning her face up towards him. “Not hurt all?”

Jester blinked rapidly. “Well, _technically_ I’m not exactly at tip-top condition just yet, but I’ll be back to normal tomorrow morning, but thank you for asking Fjord, I know all the blood on my clothes looks _pretty_ bad, but I feel totally fine now,” she rushed, not looking him in the eye. Fjord’s hand moved away. “I was messed up, you guys. But Caduceus fixed me quickly and I healed myself too so…” Her voice was crackling a little. She cleared her throat. “Don’t worry about me.”

Caleb, who had been quiet so far, standing against a doorframe and staring at the assassin, shook his head. “This wasn’t supposed to ever happen again,” he said. “This was… _geistlos_ —dangerously stupid of me. If we had been in my mansion…”

Jester finally extricated herself from Beau. She approached and tugged on the sleeve of Caleb’s nightshirt. “Silly. It’s not your fault. We needed your stronger magic yesterday, remember? If you hadn’t used your most powerful spells in that big battle, we might have died then. And I’m not dead now! None of us are. So, you did nothing wrong, really.”

Caleb didn’t look convinced. He was chewing on the inside of his cheek and avoiding her eyes.

“None of you are allowed to blame yourselves for this!” Jester declared to the whole hallway. Caduceus had arrived from the roof holding a tray of sweet-smelling tea and was startled by her sudden volume, sending the cups rattling. “None of you! You all saved my life, in my dreams and here!”

The group looked a little confused. They seemed to be too tired, now that the adrenaline had worn off and the early hour was weighing on them, to ask her what she meant by that or to argue.

“The only person who is to blame here is you,” she concluded, turning her accusing finger towards the half-orc woman on the floor. Her finger faltered and fell. “…Who even are you, anyway?”

Beau knelt before the assassin and woke her with a gruff slap across the face. The woman grunted and blinked in the light of the hallway, taking in the half dozen faces around her: angry, upset, confused, exhausted.

“Wanna fill me in on why the fuck you just tried to kill our best friend?” asked Beau.

Jester quietly palmed her holy symbol and called a zone of truth to manifest around the group. She felt only Fjord and the assassin fall to its influence. But the assassin woman appeared to be too tired to even fight the interrogation process. She easily told her story.

She had been a follow of the Traveller. She had attended Travellercon and witnessed the fall of Artagan. Without faith her life had fallen to shambles in a matter of weeks. She had no purpose now, no friends and no family, no support network after the religion was all but dismantled. She blamed the high priestess of the Traveller for her strife. The story was so simple, Jester found that she wasn’t surprised at all by the woman’s words. As they listened the others were nervous, glancing between the assassin, themselves, and at Jester, all waiting for her response.

Beau held the woman’s collar to keep her bloodied head up and watched Jester come closer. “Your heart was broken,” Jester stated.

The woman pressed her lips together and said nothing. Jester knelt in front of her.

“You lashed out. I know I want to do that sometimes too when it feels like my world is falling apart around me. But you made the wrong choice here, miss. Hurting me isn’t going to stop you from hurting. You lost an important part of your life, and I am sorry for that really, I am, and healing is going to take time, not revenge. This was the wrong choice.”

She noticed the assassin woman’s swollen eyes lingering on the small silvery emblem hanging from her fingers. She raised her holy symbol and looked at it herself for a moment. It was smeared with her own dark blood.

Jester chewed her lip. She was going to have a good long chat with the Traveller some time soon about his interfering with the events of the evening, about dreams and lies and daggers in the dark. There was something beginning to simmer within Jester as she thought about it; she didn’t think it was anger, but it felt similar to it. It was something Artagan would answer to soon enough.

“There are people looking out for you even if you don’t know it,” said Jester, still staring at her symbol. “There is invisible help everywhere. Even when you feel like you’re totally alone and the world around you is unfamiliar and hostile and brittle, like it could break apart under your fingertips, you’re never totally alone in that world. You just have to look for the right kind of help sometimes. Sometimes it comes to you. Sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s out there, I promise.”

Beau let go of the woman’s collar and her head slumped down. A few held breaths were released in chorus behind Jester, and she stood up, brushing invisible dust from her blood-soaked nightgown.

“We will find you some help tomorrow,” Jester announced. “Just to get you on your way. A lovely happy ending for you.”

They put the woman in Beau and Jester’s room for the night. They gave her spare blankets and healed the worst of her injuries and told her that if she tried anything funny again they would kill her. She didn’t seem eager to try.

Jester was left in the hall, about half an hour after the whole ordeal had kicked off. She was tired. Most of her friends had gone on their way back to their own rooms, muttering their agreement to deal with their ex-Traveller follower the following morning, yawning and bumping into one another as they went. Jester lingered in the hall with Yasha and Fjord, who were half-heartedly inspecting the poison sword.

“Caleb said it’s not enchanted,” Yasha was saying. “It’s just, you know, sharp and mean.”

“Mean,” agreed Fjord. “I don’t know if I would have survived that attack myself, without any magic to help me.”

Jester rolled her head slowly side-to-side against the hallway wall, her back to it, listening to her friends talk, tapping a horn against the painted stone every two seconds.

“Well, I’ll hold onto it,” said Yasha, “for now. We might be able to sell it in town.”

“Good idea.” Fjord yawned and waved vaguely at Yasha as she went off down the hall away from them. He turned to Jester. He seemed surprised to find that she was still there. “Are you…are you heading back to your room now?” he asked her haltingly, pointing a thumb down the hall.

“My bed is kinda soaked in blood,” she said.

“Oh, right.”

“And after all that stuff that happened, me almost being killed alone in my room and everything, I sorta don’t want to sleep in a room all by myself tonight anymore.”

“Oh.”

“Can I sleep in your room, Fjord?”

“Ah.” Fjord stared at her.

She added firmly, “on your floor. I would have asked Beau but…the mean woman is there, you know.”

“You could have asked…Yasha,” Fjord supplied weakly.

Jester shrugged. “I guess I realised that I want the others to think I’m strong. Like, strong _all the time_. And I know that’s not how they think of me, they know that I can’t be strong all the time, and I’m okay with them knowing that, but I want them to see me the most when I’m strong. I don’t like them worrying about me.” She tipped her head towards Fjord. “But you know me the best.”

Fjord’s mouth was opening and closing very quickly.

“I’m okay with you seeing me when I’m a little bit weak.”

He was turning a very deep shade of green. She decided to put him out of his misery.

“I do not want to sleep in the hallway tonight, Fjord. May I sleep on the floor of your bedroom, hopefully on some spare blankets and cushions, so that I might feel a little safer?”

“You can have the bed,” he blurted. “I’ll take the floor.” And with that he marched away from her towards his room.

Jester pushed away from the wall of the corridor with a smile. It had felt different and so much healthier to talk to her friends in reality. They had been convincing in the dream, but not quite perfect. This was better. Here, Jester felt the glow of love surge deep in her chest, a feeling that a dream couldn’t replicate, in place of the cold ache between her ribs she had been haunted by before. She placed both hands over that glow and walked through the halls of the house and looked forward to a dreamless night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this fic was just an experiment, a writing exercise to get me back into practice, and my first CR fic, it would be a big surprise to me if people liked it.  
> Will I write more CR fic? Maybe. I'm generally pretty bad at keeping promises, so I won't make one, but writing this was a lot of fun.


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